As part of his evaluation, Poulter noticed that he had similar long-game statistics as one elite player, but that guy holed more 10-to-20-footers. The difference between the two was about $3 million in earnings.

Last year, Poulter was ranked outside the top 100 on Tour in putting from inside 10 feet (109th) and from 10-15 feet (152nd).

“That’s too much to give up,” he said.

Poulter has adopted the popular AimPoint green-reading method, and this week he has made 4 of 9 attempts from 10-20 feet, a drastic improvement from a year ago, when he sank less than 25 percent of those putts.

“It gets smoke-screened by some good putting in a couple of big tournaments,” he said, “and that’s not good enough.”